forced himself to face the man who inexplicably considered him a friend. “What do we do to get rid of her?”
Rowan retrieved the bottle of Midleton’s and poured himself a clean shot.
Ethan’s eyebrows drew together and he absently rubbed his furrowed forehead. “I thought that wasn’t the whiskey you drank to get drunk.”
Ice-blue eyes met his. “You’re getting drunk. I’m only here in a support role. Plus, you drank from the bottle. I prefer to keep my glass to my person.”
“Whatever.” Ethan took another sip, appreciating the ease with which the strong alcohol now went down. “Why are you so supportive of my intent to get blotto? You don’t even like me.”
“If you’d been paying attention to the gossiping hens around this place, you’d have heard I don’t like anyone or anything.”
“Gossip is for little girls and old women. Oh, and doctors. You wouldn’t believe how doctors gossip around their computer monitors in a hospital.” He shook his head. “Crazy.”
Rowan snorted. “Don’t be a fool. Gossip is limited only by one’s ability to communicate, be it by mouth, hand or other method.” Lifting his glass to his lips, he paused. “So, how long are you going to avoid the specter in the room?”
Ethan’s hands spasmed and the bottle he’d claimed fell to the floor, shattering on impact. “Where?” He glanced around wildly. “Where is it? She? It? She’s here, isn’t she?”
Rowan watched him through those notoriously shrewd, dispassionate eyes. “I haven’t seen her since she took off down the hall.”
“You said she was here. You said, ‘How long are you going to avoid the specter—’”
Rowan interrupted with a sharp look. “It was a question similar to ‘How long will you avoid the elephant in the room?’”
With a ragged curse, Ethan picked his way across the glass-strewn floor and back to the bookshelf where he blindly retrieved a third bottle. “And if I’d been an elephant handler traumatized by a crazed elephant, I’d have reacted the same.”
“Lucky for us you don’t have any elephants in your past.”
“It’s far more likely there’s an elephant—maybe even two—hanging around in my past than there is a woman who can claim with any legitimacy that she’s my wife.” Ethan pulled the cork free of the new bottle with a sharp pop. He took a long draw and coughed, his response as harsh as if the words had been run over a coarse cheese grater. “Trust me.”
* * *
Isibéal slipped unseen through the doors of the castle. That she could pass through walls of glass and stone, doors of wood and iron, still bothered her. For all that she’d been dead for centuries, she’d been trapped in her own personal hell. This? Moving free in the world? It would take some getting used to.
Wandering across the massive foyer and toward the stairs, attention wandering as she stepped from stone to stone, she didn’t see the man in time to keep from passing through him. She shuddered as she emerged, a sick sensation stealing through her middle even as a muffled whump had her looking back.
The man she’d passed through had collapsed and now flopped about like a flightless chick cast from its nest too early. The paroxysm he suffered proved severe as he smashed his head against the stone again and again, his arms and legs alternately flailing and stiffening as straight and rigid as an arrow’s shaft.
Isibéal moved to kneel at his side. She wanted to help him, to ease whatever pain he suffered, but without a body?
She sat back on her heels.
Useless. I’m entirely useless.
Men rushed to the foyer and headed straight for their felled brother.
Isibéal scrambled away, determined not to touch another soul until she was sure what the consequences were—for both parties. Summoning her focus and touching Lachlan...Ethan...had cost her mightily, but it was a pain she would gladly pay if only to touch him again. Yet this particular discomfiture proved powerful enough to sway her from any desire to touch any other human being. The consequences were a bit unnerving.
Moving like the wraith she’d become, she climbed the broad flight of stairs that would take her to the guests’ quarters in the northern wing.
Ethan’s quarters.
She remembered this castle as it had been before her death—stones rough from recent hewing, glass smooth in the windows that had been afforded such luxury, peat smoke already marring the hearths, and what had seemed like miles of hallways.
The stones were smoother now.
Glass, even resplendent stained glass by the most skilled artisans, filled every window and overhead opening.
Hearths were generally cold, replaced by strange flameless stoves.
Yet not everything was different, thank the gods. The floor plan had remained largely the same, from dining hall to observatory to sleeping quarters. She knew these halls. Remembered them. Had spent the last several months rediscovering nooks and crannies all around the castle as she observed Ethan.
Husband.
She couldn’t believe she’d laid claim to him in such a forward, arguably brazen manner, let alone in front of another assassin.
He’s mine.
Her heart’s objection to her mind’s reserved behavior coaxed a smile from her. She’d always had a bit of a problem with what men deemed appropriate for women to say and do. Seemed death hadn’t changed that.
Perhaps Ethan would still find that part of her as appealing now as he had done all those years ago. He used to tease her, once even threatening to do away with her dresses and make her wear men’s breeches after he found her riding astride her horse, voluminous skirts tucked around her legs. She’d stumped him when she begged him to follow through.
A soft laugh escaped her.
Gods, she had loved that man. That he might not be the same man he’d once been terrified her. Fear didn’t change the fact that simply seeing him had elicited from her the same response as in their previous life together. Being in Ethan’s presence made Isibéal want to be more, do more, rise to any challenge, fight harder—all the same feelings, emotions and reactions Lachlan had roused in her.
Not all, silly woman.
“Silly woman, indeed,” she murmured, pressing the back of one hand to her cheek.
Honesty, then. The other emotions Ethan roused in her were the very same Lachlan had discovered. Longing. Fervor. Lust. Passion.
“Love,” she amended for no one save herself. “All based in love.”
The emotions were there, regardless. She wanted Ethan as a woman wanted a man. No, not just “a” man. Her man. For that was who he was, and would always be, to her.
“Husband.”
She trailed unfeeling fingers along the stone walls out of habit, pausing when she reached Ethan’s door. She heard two voices. One belonged to her husband. The other could only be the large assassin who’d seen her. The latter gave her pause.
She laid a hand on the door and took a deep, unnecessary breath. “No matter what you’ve heard over the years, Isibéal, no matter that you know bits and pieces of his...Rowan’s...history, he’s given you no cause to fear him.”
That didn’t mean her inanimate heart wasn’t lodged in her throat. Some physical reactions, it seemed, were unaffected by death’s strict parameters.
Tucking a stray strand of hair behind one ear, Isibéal drifted forward, through the door and into Ethan’s personal space.
Luck was with her as she found Rowan with his back to her. That allowed her to enter unseen. She’d